


(i must be dreaming)

by TheBookDinosaur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Community: HPFT, I'm Sorry, Mental Torture, tom riddle being a jackass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: we all live and we all die
  
  but that does not begin to justify you





	

**Author's Note:**

> title and summary from the evanescence song Bleed (I Must Be Dreaming)

The summer that she is eight, the orphanage arranges a trip to the beach. It is a great luxury, because Amy cannot remember the last time that she had been to the beach. When she runs to Dennis and tells him the news, he is so full of hope.

“It’s going to be amazing,” he says earnestly, sitting side–by–side with her on his bed because it’s softer than hers. He was never scared of catching cooties from her, not ever, even when they were four and everyone called them husband and wife and blew raspberries at them. Dennis had asked them to stop, and Amy had punched them. She thought her way worked better. “It’s going to be sunny and happy and Mrs Cole will be nice to us, because that’s what beaches do to people.”

“I don’t think so,” Amy says doubtfully. “The last time I went to the beach I remember sand got stuck in my eye.”

“When was the last time you went to the beach?” Dennis asks, and he doesn’t ask her in a patronising way at all but sounds just _interested_ , so Amy doesn’t really mind.

“Ages ago,” she says, shrugging.

“There are probably lots of things you forgot, though,” Dennis points out. “And anyway, you’re older now and not so dumb as to stick sand in your eye.” Amy nods, because Dennis is a month older than her and a lot smarter and she trusts him.

Dennis keeps saying is going to be amazing and even though she doubts it because she doubts everything, his cheerfulness is catching and soon she’s really excited to go to the beach as well.

When they do finally get to the beach it is amazing. Mrs Cole is happy for once, and she lies down on her deck chair and puts a towel over her eyes, and there is a circle around her where the kids tiptoe and whisper, but outside of that mutually agreed upon boundary everyone is happy and shouting.

It’s not as warm as Dennis said, but for Amy it’s so much better than the winter winds that seem to get everywhere, even inside the building and even inside her clothes sometimes. The sun is shining weakly, the sand is grainy but golden and the sea is blue and white and beautiful, with rocks jutting up from it like shark’s teeth. Amy has never seen a shark and neither has Dennis, but they both agree that if sharks have teeth, then they would look like those rocks.

There is laughter in the crowd of kids and it is the best thing that Amy has experienced in her life so far, and when she turns to Dennis to as him whether or not this is the best thing in his life, she sees someone walking up to them.

“Dennis,” she whispers, poking him. He turns around with a huge grin plastered onto his face, and Amy can’t help but to smile a little in return.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know who that is? Over there?” she asks, trying to point subtly. She fails, and the boy smiles slightly. It isn’t a warm smile like Dennis’, though, and Amy frowns slightly.

Dennis turns his head as the boy reaches them. “Hello," he says, not sitting down, not smiling.

“Hello,” Dennis replies. The boy looks friendlier.

“I saw there were steps going down and I wanted to see if you wanted to explore them with me,” the boy said. He looks at least two years older than Amy and Dennis. The sheer novelty of spending time with someone two whole years older than they are infect Dennis and Amy, who follow him obediently to the edge of the beach, away from the rest of the group. 

“That’s Tom Riddle,” Dennis whispered to Amy; he knew more people than she did. “He’s ten.” He lowered his voice even more. “People say he’s queer.” Once the three of them reach the edge of the beach, they peer down.

“There aren’t any steps,” Amy says boldly after a moment of quick scrutiny. The boy, Tom Riddle, looks at her coolly.

“Really?” he asks. “ _I_ see them. Here, take my hand and I’ll lead you down.” Dennis puts his hand in Tom’s easily enough, and although Amy is slightly more reluctant, somehow Tom gets a good grip on their wrists. He doesn’t speak for a moment and instead stares at a cave in the sea. Just as Amy begins to get nervous, there is a feeling of immense nausea that fills her several times over. The world seems to spin and turn white, and when she can see and hear again, they are inside a cave.

Dennis is retching on the ground, and Amy runs over to him. “Where are we?” she asks Tom Riddle fearfully. There is something cold in his eyes as he looks at her and Dennis, huddled together on the cold, damp ground of stone.

She can just see out of an opening in the rock, and what she can see is ¬¬blue and white sea, throwing itself up in a futile struggle against a tall cliff. “That’s the sea. That’s our beach!” she realises. “How did we get here?” she asks, because it is painfully clear to her that somehow Tom Riddle has magicked them into the cave he was staring at so intensely. Dennis sits up beside her, and she knows the first inklings of fear as he puts his arm around her, as if to protect her.

“How did we get here?” he repeats, and Tom Riddle just stares at them. The cave is stiflingly quiet as the three children stare at each other. 

After a second Tom Riddle breaks eye contact and looks away, murmuring something that sounds like “It didn’t work…I was sure…” before staring Amy in the eye. “Nightmares,” he says clearly, firmly.

_She’s locked in a cupboard, screaming and begging to be let out. Dennis opens the door and stares at her with an empty gaze. “There’s nobody here,” he mutters before closing the door again, and she is clothed in darkness._

Vaguely, she hears somebody gasp and feels muscles she doesn’t know she has twitch.

_There is an army, but nobody can see them, only her. All the soldiers are Tom Riddles, and they’re coming for her, making their way through the orphanage. She can’t run._

_Nothing. It’s not black, or white, or blinding, but nothing, and she is falling, her hair whipping in her face and her hands clutching at nothingness._

_She is at the beach, but the sea is no longer at the bottom of the cliff. It’s rising, past her and then above her, and somehow she knows it’s going to fall._

_There is a lake in front of her, stretching all the way to the horizon. She stands uncertainly, and then Tom Riddle’s voice whispers from behind her and an arm pushes her in the lake. As she falls, she realises with horror that the lake is a whirlpool, and she is sucked under, fighting for breath._

_Her family are on the bridge, the bridge that collapsed and the bridge they died on. She tries to shout a warning to them, but she can’t move. She can’t speak. She can only watch._

Her throat is raw and aching.

_The orphanage is on fire, and the flames are taking the shapes of animals, trying to hunt her down, crawling towards her. She tries to run, but the flames are too fast. She feels a blinding heat, and looks down to see herself melting._

_She’s in pain, so much pain. There are people besides her trying to help her, people who love her, her mother and father. But if she keeps on screaming, she’s going to die. She’s screaming now._

She is screaming, and Dennis is shaking her as she trembles and comes back to reality, to the cold stone floor of the cave, the dampness in her hair from the sea, the concern in Dennis’ eyes, the tears streaming down her face and the nightmares in her mind.

“What did you do to her?” he shouts at Tom Riddle, and Amy wants to groan that no, don’t challenge him, you’ll make him angry, just leave us alone, please, please, _please_.

There is a coldness in his eyes that seems to flash red before Dennis starts to twitch and then, silently, tears stream down his face. Amy has never seen Dennis cry, Dennis who has always been her protector and her confidante, the person she can always rely on. When he cries, something breaks inside her and she starts to scream, loud and shrill and echoing a thousand times through the cave. His voice joins hers soon enough, and Tom Riddle does nothing but stare at the two broken children in front of him.

Calling off his power is easy now that he knows how it works. It is easiest with eye contact, which is fascinating, and the two children are half–lying on the ground in front of him, which makes him feel delightfully powerful.

“You will not speak of this,” he tells them, smiling slightly. This new ability has successfully been mastered, but these two cannot tell anyone. “You will not speak of this,” he repeats, slightly more forcefully, and the children scream as he gives them another taste of his glorious power.

They are pathetic, so easy to break. He is quite certain he would never have surrendered so easily. The girl especially began screaming quite early. Both of their faces are covered in tears and saltwater and blood and snot, so he clears it away for them. After all, they have performed well as his test subjects.

It is a simple affair for him to get back to the beach with them in tow.

* * *

She cannot sleep after that incident. Mrs Cole gets annoyed with Dennis for waking everybody up with his screaming and puts him in a different room. Without him, Amy feels lost and so alone that she steals up to sleep with him, and when she reaches his room he is wide awake with a candle burning next to him. His tiny figure looks almost lost in the bed

“I was wondering whether to come down or not,” he whispers, obviously relieved that she came to him. That night and all the nights after, they sleep in the same bed, ignoring Mrs Cole’s mutterings and attempts to keep them apart.

Dennis has nightmares almost every night. He wakes screaming from each one, which inevitably feature Tom Riddle in some way and most of the time include Amy as well. 

Her way of dreaming is different. She cannot move while she is dreaming and awakes with a sudden jolt, with all her muscles clenched so tightly that she cannot move for several minutes, her heart beating so fast she thinks that it’s going to break. The worst ones always have Dennis in them.

One day, Tom Riddle comes after them, and though they try to escape he manages to corner them in a room while the other kids are playing outside. “Remember,” he whispers easily, smiling as though they are best of friends, ignoring the terrified looks on their faces, “don’t tell anyone. Or else…” he trails off. The three of them stare at each other again, and when Amy locks eyes with the strange boy who can give nightmares he makes a sudden movement, and they both flinch back. Tom Riddle laughs and walks away.

After that, it becomes hard to speak. Amy is terrified that if she starts to talk, everything will come spilling out, she will tell someone everything and Tom Riddle will know and somehow give her nightmares again. She talks less and less, opening up only to Dennis when she knows that they’re alone because she never needs to be afraid of him. He was there with her, after all, and somehow that means more to her than the whole wide world.

They can hardly bear to be apart from one another, and they try ignore the whispers and giggles that come after them as they walk into the room touching somehow. It is comforting to be with the person who was with her while she was in the Cave, and he must feel the same. She hates this place, and the kids she once thought of as friends don’t understand, they can never understand so they start teasing instead, and it is the most frightening thing when a red mist covers her vision. When it lifts, someone is always crying because she has punched them or kicked them. Once Mrs Cole has to pull her away from Billy Stubbs kicking and screaming.

“Why did you do it?” Dennis whispers later that night, when both of them have woken from their nightmares. “Hit Billy, I mean. He only said that he hears me screaming some nights.”

“I don’t know,” Amy whispers, staring down at her hands. “I get this red _misty_ thing in front of my eyes, I can’t see anything, and then when my eyes go back to normal I find out that I’ve been punching someone. I can’t explain it. I’m so scared, Dennis.” He hugs her after that, and she feels a bit better.

She cannot even look at Tom Riddle anymore, and she and Dennis are increasingly withdrawn from the other kids in the orphanage. Mrs Cole can never understand how Dennis, one of her most diligent students, and Amy, one of the most outspoken children she has housed under her roof, have suddenly become as quiet as mice and as scared as turkeys in December.

She begs Dennis to promise her that he’ll never leave her because if she doesn’t have that one person who was there for her next to her all the time then she doesn’t know what she’ll do with herself, and this time it is him giving her a reality check. He says that people will adopt who they want when they want and they probably won’t be adopted together, and she looks at him and tears roll down her face, salty on her lips and tongue, and she flinches away from them because her tears taste like the ocean.

* * *

The autumn that she is nine, Tom Riddle leaves the orphanage. She is too scared to ask why, or who, but she is desperate and foolish enough to ask _is he coming back_ and to her horror, the answer is _yes_.

* * *

The winter that she is twelve, someone comes to the orphanage and adopts her. She is listening outside the door as Mrs Cole talks to the woman who wants to adopt her.

“I tell you though, Mrs Maude, that Amy, she’s a bit of a strange one. _Different_ , if you get my meaning.”

“Being different is nothing to be afraid of, Mrs Cole, and I don’t intend to let a little something like that put me off.” The woman speaks crisply, in a purely businesslike manner. Amy can almost visualise the woman’s sharp face as she asks, “What sort of problems does she cause?”

“Well, she’s very quiet, keeps to herself, only has one friend in the whole of this orphanage, and she has nightmares. Her friend,” Mrs Cole continues, “he has nightmares ‘most every night and I think she does too, only she’s quieter about them. They sleep in the same bed –”

“In the same bed? I’m telling you, Alberta Cole, if anything funny –”

“No, Mrs Maude, nothing funny’s been going on under my roof. I’m a godly woman,” Mrs Cole is most likely fluffed up like an offended hen, “and I see no harm in it, the two of them were barely eight when they started and they’re inseparable, have been ever since they were eight. Lock the door, put them on different floors, tried everything but somehow they find each other.”

“She seemed very obedient, not the kind to make trouble…” the voices fade away as Amy creeps back towards her and Dennis’ room. She has heard enough.

Amy is barely allowed a goodbye with Dennis, but she cries as she packs and Dennis comes in when she is halfway finished. No words are needed, they know each other so well, and he sobs as well when they hug each other goodbye.

“Goodness me, child,” Mrs Maude says as they walk away, tears still rolling down Amy’s face. “I would’ve thought you’d be glad to see the back of that old place.”

Amy doesn’t speak.

* * *

Mrs Maude finds Amy everything she expects. The girl never talks, and doesn’t give her much trouble during nighttimes, either.

Amy manages to have a spectacularly normal life with Mrs Maude, whose only demands are for her to be in bed by eight thirty, to do the chores and to pray and behave like a proper Christian ought. She goes through school as a completely mediocre student and never develops a passion for anything. Maths is something she finds easy, the numbers clear her mind, but by no means is it her destiny.

The other students whisper that she’s stuck up when she’s terrified of speaking to them.

One night, it is on the radio that the Wool’s Orphanage has been the victim of a large fire. The west wing of the building was destroyed, but the place is still functioning. Mrs Cole’s harassed–sounding voice appears on the radio as well.

“We’re hoping that, with a little bit of luck, we can have the orphanage back up and running by the time Easter rolls around. In the meantime, children will be occupying the East Wing of the building.”

The next morning while Mrs Maude is out shopping she finds an article about it in the newspapers, and there is a list of casualties on the third page, second column. Amy reads it, showing more concern and emotion in the three months that she has been living with Mrs Maude. Printed neatly in black letters on an off–white page are the words _Eric Whalley_ , the name to start the list of eight dead children.

 _Dennis Bishop_ is the fourth name, and Amy begins to cry, frantically looking for one name she knows will not be there but hopes desperately to see anyway. _Tom Riddle_ is not on the list and Amy wishes that she is dreaming, please let her be dreaming.

She is still screaming when Mrs Maude returns home.

* * *

After that, things get so much worse. There are more nightmares, and so many reminders of Dennis that she can hardly keep from screaming and screaming and screaming. Someone’s hairstyle. The way a boy might put his arm around a girl to comfort her. A plain grey t–shirt, so like what they had to wear at the orphanage.

She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t, but it is too much for her and she starts to take a knife to her arm. Something she read once comes back to her – _an external expression of an internal pain?_ – and for the first time, Amy thinks she understands what it means.

Because the knife hurts like hell (she shouldn’t be doing this, she _shouldn't_ ) but it’s nothing compared to the hurt in her mind and heart.

* * *

The winter she is sixteen, she tries to commit suicide.

Mrs Maude stares at her with disappointed eyes and people come to ask her questions but she won’t answer, she _can’t_ answer, because if she starts to talk everything will come out at these people who have kind eyes and should never attract any sort of attention from that dark-haired boy in all her nightmares.

It’s called ‘treatment’ and they act like she’s broken when she’s not, and then it occurs to her that maybe she’s been broken for a long time now, and that thought makes her want to cry again. Mrs Maude brings her to a table with other people and they try to discuss herself with her, and she keeps silent until the end of the conversation. When the people stand to go, she thinks _next time I will end this properly_. Then there is a stinging sensation on her face and Mrs Maude has tears running down to her chin, shouting something that Amy cannot comprehend.

* * *

Two weeks later, when the flowers are tentatively pushing their heads up from the muddy soil she’s tossed into a new place, a clean white place that smells of disinfectant. She is confined to her grey room where there are no knives. Amy cannot decide whether she is grateful for that or not.

She gives up soon, and the people who visit to help her eventually lose hope as well, slowly, until their visits become nap times.

There is food and water offered to her, and it is both the hardest and easiest thing in the world to give it up. They try to make her eat and drink but they cannot, and she hears the matron protest vehemently against force feeding, having experienced it herself as a suffragette and refusing to "subject anyone else to that barbaric _torture_ ", insisting that it would reflect on the whole organisation she is the head of and forbidding it.

Amy wonders whether Dennis would approve or not.

* * *

(twenty–six years after Tom Riddle's first casualties, the First Wizarding War starts.)


End file.
